Stop Apologizing for Hustling and Start Using AI to Win

Still awake at midnight explaining to yourself…again… why you're doing all of this? You know that feeling.  

This episode is your official permission slip to stop apologizing. 

Inspired by a Cody Sanchez post that hit Joe Downs right in the soul, hosts Joe Downs and Peter Swain dig into what it really means to be in a "hustle season", and how to use AI side hustles and AI workflows to make sure that season actually ends on your terms. 

Peter introduces the concept of "custom instructions" as a life coach filter in ChatGPT and Claude, turning your AI into a whole-life advisor that refuses to give you advice that works in only one area of your life. 

If you're a busy professional grinding toward something real and tired of explaining yourself to people who just don't get it, this episode is unmistakably for you.

Listen For

3:46 How is Joe managing five simultaneous business ventures in a single hustle season — and what's the cost?

9:34 What are "custom instructions" in ChatGPT and Claude, and why should every entrepreneur set them up immediately?

12:42 How can you use AI to solve a $30K cash flow problem in 15 days without wrecking your health or your family time?

28:40 How do you use AI to define the end of your hustle season before you burn yourself out chasing a finish line that keeps moving?

47:29 What one custom instruction can stop you from making your worst decisions when you're sleep-deprived and in the grind?

Links Mentioned

Peter's Free AI Business Audit | Storagemoguls.ai | Claude | ChatGPT

Email the “Idiots” Joe and Peter

idiots@successfulidiots.com 

Joe Downs

Website | LinkedIn | YouTube | Email Joe:joe@belroseam.com 

Peter Swain

Website | Email | LinkedIn | X

Transcript

Peter Swain (00:00):

If anyone that listens to this, that needs to hear this, let me just say this sucks.You are not alone. This too shall pass. If you're in that middle of that real deep grind and people are being judgmental and not sporting, it is a really lonely, horrible, terrible, shitty place. And just because we're not in the room with you, we're in the room with you. It's good. You got it. You'll be fine. Don't worry. Get AI. Tell it to slap you around the face every so often. You'll be good.

Joe Downs (00:34):

Nobody knew his name yet, but they knew his face because he was the guy refilling their breadsticks at Red Lobster, full shifts. Then he'd go home to his mother's house in Queens and sew hats until he couldn't keep his eyes open. Then he'd wake up and do it again. He wasn't waiting for permission. He wasn't waiting for the right moment. He was just building quietly and relentlessly while everyone around him thought he was out of his mind. All the big brands passed on him more than once. Didn't matter. He had one thing they couldn't see. He knew exactly what he was building and he wasn't going to stop until it was built. It was hustle season and he was going to win it. I'm Joe Downs. With me is Peter Swain. We're just a couple of successful idiots using AI to simplify our lives and optimize our businesses.

(01:25):

Peter, before I ask you a true or false question here, want to take a guess who I'm talking about?

Peter Swain (01:33):

Hats. I'm going to go for the guy that invented Black Clover, but I reckon I'm wrong.

Joe Downs (01:41):

That's a good guess, but no.

Peter Swain (01:44):

So who is it?

Joe Downs (01:45):

Damon John.

Peter Swain (01:46):

Damon John.

Joe Downs (01:48):

From Shark Tank. And who knew? Red Lobster. Just another story of an entrepreneur who just is relentless and stays after it. All right. And we're going to talk about why in a second here. Peter, true or false? The British approach to a hustle season is to schedule it for after tea before supper and never during Wimbledon.

Peter Swain (02:12):

100%. And also with the Football World Cup. The actual thing that's football, the one you play with your feet, not the football that you play with your hands.

Joe Downs (02:20):

Well, we kick a little in football.

Peter Swain (02:22):

A little.

Joe Downs (02:23):

A

Peter Swain (02:23):

Little. We also have hands in the football a little.

Joe Downs (02:26):

A little. Peter, I suspect that what we're about to talk about today is going to cause some ripples around the dinner table, not in a overwhelming ... I don't think any fights are ... Well, I shouldn't say that. Maybe some fights will break out. But I think it's important to give our listener permission to stop apologizing for the ones that are working as hard as they're working.

Peter Swain (02:48):

100%.

Joe Downs (02:49):

And I think they're going to feel seen for it. And then we're going to talk about how to make sure the thing you're sprinting to build like Damon actually becomes an asset, not another job. And that's it. And this actually hits very close to home for me in a lot of ways, like every note right now. Because I'm going to be honest with ... Well, Peter, you know this. I'm going to be honest with everybody else. I've been up till most nights till one o'clock in the morning. The last several months, I'd say six months. Building storage moguls, the website, platform, content, curriculum, sales systems, email campaigns, eBooks, podcasts, deep dives, webinars, all of it simultaneously while running the Belrus Group, which still owns and operates 13 storage facilities with two in development and three more under contract to buy and always looking for more.

(03:46):

And then on top of that, I'm an active partner in a distressed debt company called US Mortgage Resolution. And normally that doesn't require much of me, but again, as you know, Peter, of late, it's been a lot. It's been taxing. I also have this podcast each week to prepare for as well as a YouTube series where I release a video every day on storage and then also the storage mocks podcast. And there's a part of me, even with all that, that's been waiting for someone to say it's okay because I have the self-doubt about it as well, that this is the right thing to be doing right now and I don't get that. I don't get that from any. I get the opposite, actually. I get you're doing too much, you work too hard, et cetera. Which when you are working that hard and that much, that's the last thing you want to hear.

Peter Swain (04:40):

100%.

Joe Downs (04:41):

Because hearing that and then having to defend and explain it, why you're doing it is exhausting in and of itself. So I stumbled upon an article from Cody Sanchez, a post, I should say, about not apologizing for chasing money and it obviously resonated with me and this is the highlights of it when we get into it. She basically said, "If you're out there hustling, don't apologize for it. It's hard to change the world when you're broke. You can find a work-life balance when you can ... " I love this. When you can afford a life.

(05:20):

And that spoke to me, especially in the dawn of AI, though there's a danger in the position I'm taking here as well, which I'll bring up later. But first, I want to be clear. She wasn't glorifying burnout and I'm not either. What she's naming is a season. And the reason it hit me is because I could never quantify or label it like that. All I keep saying is it's temporary or there's a light at the end of the tunnel, the same nonsense, you know what I mean? So that's what hit me about this. It was the validation with the permission slip and some PR talking points to boot. For the storage mobiles launch and leveling off, I think I know exactly what the end of my hustle season looks like. It's not someday ... I sort of know the milestone. I shouldn't say exactly. I sort of know what it looks like.

(06:12):

And I and others could use the help, Peter, of identifying that. Can you walk us through what actually separates a productive hustle season from just grinding forever and how we can use AI to help us not only get to the end of that hustle season, but to also keep us in check along the way.

Peter Swain (06:36):

Wow. This one cuts deep for me as well.

Joe Downs (06:39):

I thought it might.

Peter Swain (06:41):

Yeah. And one of the things that I love to think about is nothing extraordinarily ever got built by somebody doing nine to five ever in the history of ever. And you'll see these wonderful founders go, "Yeah, you should respect this and you should meditate and you should always wake up early in the morning and go for a run and breathe before you do anything." And it's like, "Okay, curiously, four years ago when you were building insert blank here, did you do any of that? " And their answer is, "Well, no." It's like, okay, but you definitely think I should. But if I look at Disney and Musk and Steve Jobs and Lululemon and Damon John, I look at any example of anyone that's built something meaningful, they've done it the unhealthy way because I was offered the phrase a while ago, which I love, strategic imbalance.

Joe Downs (07:40):

Yeah. Well, that kind of plays into this, I think.

Peter Swain (07:43):

Exactly. Forget work-life balance. It's actually more about imbalance at the right time

(07:48):

Because also the thing we get that entrepreneurs don't is, I'm just going to take my family to Disney for a month and we get that, which is pretty awesome and amazing. We get to be unbalanced. We get to stack life over here sometimes and stack work over here sometimes as well and we get to do great stuff. But you're absolutely right. The amount of times you find yourself apologizing to people or trying to explain it or justify it to people and the most amazing thing about relationships is making sure you're there to pick somebody up if and when they do fail, which doesn't judgment doesn't help that because then when the person does reach the bottom of the barrel, if that happens, they look around and there's nobody there or they don't feel there's anybody there. So it's actually better with someone like you or me just go, "Hey, I hope you're okay.

(08:48):

Can I help at all? " And watch us do our stupid crap so that when we do go, "I really need some help," you remember the people that stood by you instead of judging you and trying to assess and trying to understand. So I 100% get it and I think this is such an important subject. We're going to introduce the listener today, Joe, to the concept of custom instructions and good custom instructions, because I think that's the answer to your question.

Joe Downs (09:17):

Oh, okay. Custom instructions for life, this is for life, this is for-

Peter Swain (09:23):

Yeah. Well, as in AI, as in life, or whatever that phrase is now.

Joe Downs (09:29):

I haven't heard it.

Peter Swain (09:30):

Oh, maybe I just made it up. Hashtag, I own it. There

Joe Downs (09:34):

You go.

Peter Swain (09:34):

Here's the thing. What you're essentially referring to is now a different mode of AI. So we've got proactive AI, reactive as in I use it, I press the keys, it does a thing. And almost all the shows we spoke about are that, but that still requires you to remember to press the keys. Now, all humans are self-confirming bias machines. They're called blind spots because you can't see them. People have said, "I just want to see my blind spots." You can't. That's why they're called blind spots. So you're never going to remember if I was to give the listener an active set of prompts to use, they're never going to remember to use them because the times when they need to use them are the times when they're doing the thing that they shouldn't be doing. So here's what I want them to do. So if you go to say Claude ChatGPT, it's a similar journey.

(10:28):

You go to settings, personalization, and there'll be a big box that says, "How do you want Claude to act?" Or in ChatGPT's case, what do you think ChatGPT should know about you? I think of the two big boxes. Okay. Technically speaking, this is what's called the system prompt, not the user prompt. So the user prompt is what you type in. When you type into ChatGPT, that is your prompt, the user prompt, but there is another prompt that is also sent at the same time and that's called the system prompt. Okay?

Joe Downs (11:02):

And the system prompt is what you're programming what you just said a secondary person-

Peter Swain (11:07):

In these customer instructions.

Joe Downs (11:08):

Okay.

Peter Swain (11:10):

This is true enough for the people that are listening. Okay. It's much more complicated as to how it takes that. It crunches it, condenses it, takes previous information, yada, yada, yada. But if we can just accept an untruth that's truthful enough, what's in that customization box is also getting sent at the same time as whatever you send through. So these system prompts and user prompts go together. So here's what I would offer people. One of my instructions in my system prompt is only ever give me whole life advice. You must find a solution that works for my health, my wealth, my family and my business. You can never give me a solution to a problem that only satisfies a few of these criteria.

Joe Downs (12:05):

So let me pause you there. I think I know what you're saying. I want to say it so that the listener understands. Your system prompt will distill it down to that simple. Only give me whole life advice. Let's just say that's all it was so that every time you have a user prompt, I think that's what you called it, right? When you input your user prompt and hit enter, the response you get back is going to be in a wrapper of whole life advice. Is that ...

Peter Swain (12:42):

Correct. So let me give you an EG. Let's say I sit with Claude today and say, "I need to add $30,000 cashflow in the next 15 days. How do I do that? " If you do not have what I just said in the instructions, it's going to say something like, "Find a hundred people in your existing list, call them, message them, sell them something one-on-one. $30,000 with a $500 product means you need to make 60 sales. 60 sales means you need to reach out to 500 people. Except that is going to impact my health because that's sedentary. They're sitting on my desk hunched over. That doesn't satisfy my health goals. It would push me to work during the evenings, which would negate my family time and it would cripple my leadership of my teams. So what would be better? What would be better is to find two or three high level people in my existing audience, get somebody on my team to research those people and then schedule calls with them whilst I go for a walk.

Joe Downs (14:01):

So here's what I just ... Let me break this down into Waze or GPS. You know how you put in an address and it gives you three routes?

Peter Swain (14:10):

Yep.

Joe Downs (14:12):

The fastest, most direct, whether I don't know about over in the UK and I don't even think it offers this anymore, or it's a

Peter Swain (14:21):

Function of ways. Avoid

Joe Downs (14:22):

Tolls. Avoid tolls is one, right? Avoid highways, right? So your system prompt is the avoid tolls, avoid highways, or let's just go with those, but your user prompt is, this is where I want to get to. So without any direction, Ways is going to send me the fastest way. But if Wayz knows, "Hey, I don't have an easy pass, I have to avoid tolls, which is what you're saying. I can't be sedentary. I need to be up and about. " So yeah, that's the fastest way to make 15 grand or whatever the number you said is, but that's not the way I can do it. That's the same as telling ways to avoid tolls or highways.

Peter Swain (15:10):

Correct.

Joe Downs (15:11):

That is fascinating.

Peter Swain (15:12):

And AI is a very smart, dumb missile. You're the one that's instructing it. So if you're like, "How do I make storage mobiles into a $5 million business in the next six months?" It's going to answer the question, but it's going to answer it.

Joe Downs (15:28):

All I have to do is things I can't physically do.

Peter Swain (15:30):

But it's going to not factor in the fact that you've got your daughter's looking at choosing a university and this is probably a period of your life that you want to spend a bit of time with her because this doesn't happen again. This is it. This three, four months before she goes away is it. So that's probably important. It also means that your wife might need more of your time and attention or vice versa during this time. So this is my point of whether you have a divine reference in your life or not, everybody I think accepts that this is our one go around on this world. So achieving the thing you want to achieve in the way you want to achieve it to me should be a non-negotiable for people.

Joe Downs (16:24):

Here's what it is, Peter. It's a life coach filter.

Peter Swain (16:26):

Yes.

Joe Downs (16:27):

The system prompt is a life coach filter because if you were having that conversation, if every day you woke up and you got on the phone with your life coach if you have one and said, "Hey, this is what I have to do today to move this forward," they would push back in certain areas and go, "Yeah, but you told me you want to make all of your son's lacrosse games, you don't want to miss them, which is without this system prompt, it's up here in my head, but that's one of my own life coach filters." So he would say, "Well, then you can't do it this way. You can't schedule meetings at three o'clock in the afternoon because you're going to be driving to your son's lacrosse game." So no, that's so fascinating. So back to ... Yeah.

Peter Swain (17:09):

So the reason I want people to do this is when they're in that hustle season in my experience, it's when you haul yourself accidentally far too many times. You either get addicted to the grind of it because that's now the new working model and there's a bit of like almost a bit of victim status to it of like, "Yeah, look at me, I'm working so hard." Or you start completely on the oposite side, just as dangerous, you start doing things you wouldn't normally do to earn the money to afford to do the thing, your boundaries get weak I guess on both sides. Instead of going, "No, I said I'm going to do this for 200 days." I said, "What I'm going to do is serve smart at people in Red Lobster whilst I sew hats in the evening and I plan to do that for 300 days so I can launch X." So the moments when you go, "I think I'm about to throw it in or this person just offered me a sponsorship for 2K.

(18:07):

Should I say yes?" If you look at customer instructions, I love the language of it, that life coach filter so that when you're asking it the question it's going, "No, that isn't what you said you wanted." So are we updating? Because I'm guessing your life coach and me have similar conversations like, "You told me you wanted X, so is that still true? If it's not, fantastic. You can change your mind. I'm not holding you to an old standard if the old standard isn't the new standard, but I need to be the dick that reminds you that you said that this is the standard." And

Joe Downs (18:45):

That's what a life coach would do.

Peter Swain (18:46):

100%. And AI can do that for you twenty four seven, 365 for the other 120 hours of the week that you're not on the phone with a life coach.

Joe Downs (18:56):

I think I need an AI life coach. I've never had a life coach, but now I think I can have one.

Peter Swain (19:01):

Honestly, it's one of my biggest use cases of I'm sitting there and saying, "Hey, so I'm looking at doing this. " We had a conversation recently about a commercial thing and that came from a conversation I had with AI. I'm like, "I'm conflicted here. I've got this and I've got this. "

(19:21):

Which way do I go? And it literally said, "You know who you are. " I'm like, "Yeah, I do know who I am. I do. " And I said, "I'm secret option C guy." So help me find secret option C that achieves my goals, lets me sleep at night. I want everything I never want to use the word or I want to use the word and I want that and that. I want my health and the money and the family and the business and the contribution and the growth and I want something to help me think all the way through to the end of that and find the and not the or no sacrifice, take all of it. How do you get all of it? I think I've driven you to speechless there. That's pretty good.

Joe Downs (20:19):

No, I don't know. I'm at a path of a divergent to the path in the woods here and I'm trying to decide

Peter Swain (20:26):

What's going on. Well, for example, this morning, we had to do some footage for social media.

(20:33):

A 30 second conversation with Jett around the fact that I wanted to spend time with Liz. I needed to eat food because I'm about to do four hours live today. So if I don't eat in the morning, I end up making some really silly food decisions later on in the day, which has already been tracked with AI. So AI knows that, hey, if Pete doesn't have a good breakfast on Thursdays, we're in trouble because what I'll do is walk in halfway through one of the live shows and just ram chocolate, biscuit, anything, just like I need food. So the solution was go out to breakfast with Liz and shoot the content whilst we're talking, which is check social media content, check time with my wife, check food eaten. It was a triple win. It solved all the problems or all of the things I was trying to solve at the same time.

(21:29):

And it doesn't sound that obvious, but at the time when I was facing down hungry, haven't spent time with my wife and the team saying, "We need this footage because we've got an edit schedule over the next three days." I was about to cancel the time with Liz, cancel breakfast and shoot the content.

(21:50):

That was my gut reaction and I think loads of people do that.

Joe Downs (21:54):

So this kind of plays into what I was ... I wasn't sure I was going to go down this path, but I did tease it. So one of the dangers that I found with AI, and I'm pretty sure I'm living it right now and calling it my hustle season, this is going to be if you're an entrepreneur who feeds off of what AI is doing is allowing you to do. So it's like a drug a litle bit, right? In fact, I used to joke with people like, "Be careful." People when I was introducing them to AM, like, "Be careful." It's addictive. That can lead to and has probably, if I'm being honest, it's led to me doing maybe even more than I should in the hustle season trying to take on too much. Now I've caught myself recently and backed off a few things. I was going to ask you how does somebody handle that?

(22:56):

But I think the answers in that life coach AI, the life coach filters

(23:05):

In the system prompt because to your point a second ago, I think there is an or, but not in the context that it's a never. So there are certain things I want to do when my hustle season for storage moguls, for instance, is over I do finally want to launch ... I don't know if I want to launch another podcast, but there is something else I want to do that I've been putting off. So that's the or right now. I was going to try to tackle it. It has to do with podcasts, but I was going to try to tackle it and I had to stop my own self and say, "What are you doing? There's just aren't enough hours in the day." And it was starting to creep in on sleep for the most part, but personal time as well. So I think there's an or, but it's not a never or your point, I'm not trying to diminish at all, is you don't want to have to make life choices of this or that and never both.

Peter Swain (24:13):

Yeah, I think there's-

Joe Downs (24:14):

You can have both, but the sequential order of them sometimes matters. And that's kind of what you started the show with.

Peter Swain (24:19):

Exactly. I think we're on the same path that there's prioritization of tasks and actions and projects, but I never, within the silo of business or within the silo of money or within the silo of, but I never want to have to choose to what am I going to prioritize my family or my wife?

Joe Downs (24:37):

Oh yeah, no, of course.

Peter Swain (24:39):

My business or my wife, my money or my kids, because up until AI, those were the choices. Am I going to make money or am I going to be a good dad?

Joe Downs (24:50):

That's a great point.

Peter Swain (24:52):

The sentence that haunted me for five years and it literally took me five years to get my head out and get around this was when we first had Olivia was, what am I going to lose at today? And it's a horrible mindset, but it genuinely is where I was of up until having Olivia, honestly, me and Liz's life revolved around me. I would work 18 hours a day, 16 hours a day and she would find ways to make everything else in our world work. So I never really had to sacrifice. It was always everything in our world was there to serve me doing what I was doing, which isn't in retrospect, wasn't very healthy or thanks Liz, by the way, for doing all that for me. Anyway, Olivia comes around and I'm no longer the most important person in our family. Olivia is and I'm not even second because in my head her mom is more important to her than I am to her and my business, well, that's not even there.

(25:53):

So this thought crept in of like, what am I going to lose out today because I can't win on all fronts at the same time. And it was purely a mindset issue and since I've got my head and hands around AI, I don't feel that way anymore of like, okay, what am I going to ... The capacity I have to get stuff done is insane.

Joe Downs (26:18):

And that's what I was talking about and that becomes addictive.

Peter Swain (26:23):

Yes.

Joe Downs (26:23):

Because I'm doing today five times what I did before I really embraced AI.

Peter Swain (26:29):

And you're still the block to not doing 12 times more.

Joe Downs (26:32):

I'm sure.

Peter Swain (26:33):

The AI is just sitting there going, "Put me in, coach."

Joe Downs (26:36):

I know, I know. Well, I'm learning. Well, you got to learn learning how to use it is a business in and of

Peter Swain (26:41):

Itself. No, no, but I'm saying all humans, not you as an individual. Somebody asked me how many tokens I spent yesterday on Claude Code and the answer was 16 million and I was like, "Yeah, I took an hour for lunch. I should have scheduled it to do something whilst I went an

Joe Downs (26:58):

Eight." Yeah, no, I'm sure I'm using a fraction, a tiny fraction of what I could be using. But what I was trying to get at is it's because it's addictive, you can take on so many more projects and then find yourself unwittingly in a grind, multiple grinds, multiple grinds, 5X the grinds that you were in before, but from a human personal standpoint, still a grind, just five times more productive. And I don't want to knock that because that's partly the goal here if we've established what and that's the milestone, right? How do we know when hustle season ends, how does AI help us establish what that looks like and what kind of check-ins should we set up along the way? Because you know, because I've heard you complain about it and I've gone down the rabbit hole too, especially with Claude, our favorite, but it can take you down rabbit holes and in directions that are amazing, but we're not on the original road, right?

Peter Swain (28:13):

That's also in my customer instructions, by the way.

Joe Downs (28:15):

Okay. But all of a sudden we're sightseeing and it's all interesting

Peter Swain (28:21):

And fun. Oh, and now we're working out how to do an Apparel brand. It's like, "Wow, no, I don't need to do T-shirts. I need to launch storage mobiles, not T-shirts. Shut up

Joe Downs (28:29):

An

Peter Swain (28:30):

Hour later."

Joe Downs (28:30):

So how do we use AI to define what the end of the hustle season looks like? Because that is the goal, because that's the whole reason we're doing all this. And then

Peter Swain (28:40):

What

Joe Downs (28:40):

Are some check-ins along the way?

Peter Swain (28:41):

I'd like to offer us a redefinition first because I don't think it's binary. I don't think hustle season ever ends. I think it changes and adapts and evolves. So I think even setting the question up as on what, on Friday we are, on Saturday we aren't, that doesn't work for me. A mentor of mine once told me nobody ever climbs Everest, everybody dies, but there are lots of people that went to Basecamp one and there are a few people that went from Basecamp one to Basecamp two, and there are people that go from Basecamp two to Basecamp three and there are people that then finally summit Everest, but nobody just tries to climb Everest. It's not the way it works. If you do this, if you want to go and climb Everest, I don't think it's mandatory, but I think it's almost the way it's done is there are people that just go to Basecamp one and then come back and they'll do that three years in a row and then they'll go to Basecamp two and then they'll come back.

(29:41):

The process of you don't go and climb Everest on your first year. It's a multi-phase project. So instead of saying, "When does hustle season beginning and end?" I was like, "I think it might be more useful to think about what's the first milestone." At what point do I know I've achieved something, which I think you said with check-ins, but I would like us to like Use that kind of language. And I would just have a conversation with AI of like, well, what would be the first mark that I could really call this a success? Would it be X unit sold or would it be X recurring revenue? What would be the thing? And it's really quite important from a psychological perspective to celebrate. So what is the celebration that happens? Is it buying a new TV or is it going to a sports event or is it going away with the family?

(30:29):

What is the mark in the sand that gets me here? And the reason I think that's such a powerful exercise is because walking back from that with AI, so okay, so if I was doing ... Let's take storage moguls. So if I was doing 30K a month, what is the most likely split of revenue, number one? And number two, what would I have had to have got done in order for that to happen? Who would I have to have on the team? What resources would I need? What things would I need to have done? So AI now is fantastic at saying, yeah, so you needed storage, you need the podcast done and the podcast, you need to have this many followers with this much conversion rate and you need to have this done with that and this done with this. It's like great. So now not only do we know that milestone and what it looks like, we also know what we would've actually had to do in order to reach that milestone.

(31:30):

Now we've got this beautiful framing for the guardrails for the life coach, for our life coach filter to say, "Okay, this is what I'm building. This is what it looks like. This is what I want to achieve it by. So if I now tell you tomorrow that I'm about to do X, Y, Z, I'm about to go on a TV show." Joe gets invited to launch storage moguls on a local TV news network. The life coach should turn around and say, no, because that wasn't on the plan. That isn't what we said we're going to do. Now Joe is the discerning human should be willing to go, "No, we are going to do that because it's Good Morning America. It's going out to 28 million people. So shut up. I could never have planned for this, but it's coming up so I'm going to take it anyway." But forcing you to argue your new assumptions is exactly what a life coach does of going, "No, you didn't say you're going to do that.

(32:36):

You said you're going to do this. So why are we now doing that, not this? " Because you never knew that that was even a possibility.

Joe Downs (32:48):

We're saying life coach and it's really like entrepreneur coach because entrepreneur is life and business.

Peter Swain (32:58):

I always called it like be Robin to my Batman. The hero of the story doesn't exist without the sidekick. And to me, Jett has always kind of had that very interesting role as a superpower so that I can turn around on calls and say, "Yeah, I'll write those three sequences." And before I've even finished on the call, I've alt tabbed and said, "Did you just get that? " And she's gone, "Yep, on it. " Great. And away she goes.

Joe Downs (33:33):

So milestones, not check-ins, you want to ideate to get to milestones.

Peter Swain (33:44):

Well, I just don't think hustle season is ever going to end.

Joe Downs (33:47):

No, for the entrepreneur, it's never going to.

Peter Swain (33:49):

Saying that Damon John doesn't hustle now is not true.

Joe Downs (33:57):

No, but that was hustle season for a launch, right?That was so he could launch

Peter Swain (34:02):

People. It's just going to change into a different form of hustle. I'm not trying to be semantic or pedantic for the sake of it. I think it's our brain responds to the type of questions we ask and if somebody is out there going, "When is this going to end?" The answer is it isn't. It isn't. It's going to morph and it's going to look different. As this season, sure, this season is going to end, but there'll be another season replaced quickly thereafter.

Joe Downs (34:31):

Let me stay with sports here and give you an analogy because I'm going to push back a little bit here, but we're going to agree, I think. I understand what you're saying because my wife talks about retirement sometimes. I don't know what that word means to you, but it doesn't mean anything to me. I want to live financially free, free to continue to do the hustle things that I do because that's what interests me, right?

Peter Swain (34:56):

Yeah.

Joe Downs (34:56):

So I agree with you. Joe Downs hustle life is never going to end because I'm not going to sit still. I love golf. I don't know that I could play it seven days a week for the rest of my life unless I was getting paid like the guys at Aronomic right now on the PGA Tour playing in the PGA Chambership.

Peter Swain (35:18):

Rabbit hole. Come back.

Joe Downs (35:21):

Maybe you could talk me into it, but I do want to be able to play golf at my leisure. I do want to wake up and say, "Ah, I think I'll do this today." So when I say bringing this back to sports, when I say hustle season, you're right, Damon John is hustling, but he's hustling at a different level and he's hustling in a different league.

Peter Swain (35:41):

100%.

Joe Downs (35:42):

So whatever you got, champions, whatever you do over there with relegation and you've got your multiple leagues, right? What's the bottom league?

Peter Swain (35:52):

Well, no, let's talk about the ups. I mean, there isn't really a bottom league. It carries on going down.

Joe Downs (35:57):

No, but that's the perfect example actually. I was about to compliment you guys. So we're all at different stages in life. Some people are nine to five and they have a side hustle and they're trying ... The reason they have a side hustle is to try to get rid of the nine to five and become the entrepreneur and start to control their ... B able to go to their kids' sports games that start at 3:30 in the afternoon. Most people can't make those, but that's one level of hustle. Then when you get through that, you quit your job, now you're doing what you're doing. T me that's successful, but that person isn't going to stop and that's your point. The hustle never ends because once you get a taste of it and you know what you can accomplish now, especially with AI, how much three, five, 10 X you can accomplish, then you get a taste of that.

(36:50):

You're going to continue to grow in that way. And I would call that growth. But in each of those leagues, you've got these sprints, right? Well, what is my next ... Damon John sold FUBU, or I don't know what he did, but maybe still ends a piece of it. And then I don't know what he did in between, but Shark Tank is another hustle. And then Shark Tank leads him to, he gets to pick his next hustle. So there's these multiple, these iterations of hustles, but even within them, and you nailed it with the life filter, the system prompt, but you got to use AI for it. But even within that, you have to define it all. And at no point did any of those hustles, even if you stack hustles, was I suggesting it affects your personal life. Although Cody Sanchez's point is it does at first because you have to build a life.

(37:52):

So there's that start. You got to start somewhere and then from there, I think it starts to introduce options.

Peter Swain (38:01):

See, I just don't know how much I agree with Cody on this one because I spent a lot of time in Tony Robbins' world and he does this whole thing about hands up in here if you'd like a Ferrari. Everybody puts their hands up. So, okay, why do you want the Ferrari? And the end conclusion is you don't actually want the Ferrari, you want the feeling the Ferrari gives you. And then he's like, "Great, so why don't you just choose to have that feeling now?" And it's like, whoa. And he does obviously a better version of this for me because that's what he's paid to do. But the other day, Liz and I walked to the local shops and left our phones behind and just hung out for 15 minutes and laughed and played. Now, was it Disney or Euros or first class flights? No, but it was 15 minutes together and it was fun.

(38:59):

Whilst I do agree with Cody on this, I'm also offering everybody the option to remember that with a bit more creativity, you can have it all. You know how many times that Sam and Olivia have been given a laptop and so that they can work with Daddy and they sit and yam the keys because they can't ... I mean, this is when they're like two. And then they would show me what they'd done like, great job because I was looking after kids, but I had stuff I needed to get done at work so the kids worked with me.

(39:32):

You know that I do the trading card business and to do the trading card business so they can sell cards on eBay whilst I'm doing the stuff I need to do and I'm not holding myself up as the paradigm of greatness because I've got so much to work on, but there are so many ways if you force yourself not to compromise and go, "No, I'm going to go away on holiday while I'm broke." Fantastic. Then you're going to get a tent 30 miles away that you're going to buy on Facebook Marketplace for five bucks, but you should still go and hang out next to a lake for three days. You don't need the million dollars. Everything gets better as you said, as you level up, the quality of each of those things get better, but the core of it is good food, good company and good times.

(40:30):

If you got those three, it really doesn't matter whether it's a Mitch and Star restaurant or baked beans over a fireplace or no camp. And I think AI can help people find their version of that and world instead of an all world.

Joe Downs (40:46):

I couldn't agree more and I've been where you were with the kids. Mine are a little older than yours and you know that. And I went from the, I can't play with you because I'm working, which is just the worst feeling in the world to, let's figure out how to do this together. And I got to tell you, last night I got a Facebook request or suggestion to friend or follow whatever it is, my son Deagan's app that he's launching.

Peter Swain (41:19):

That's so cool.

Joe Downs (41:20):

The high school athlete trainer nutrition app called Commit. And I looked at my phone and there it is staring at me. I'm like, wow. And I've been working, as you know, with him on that.

Peter Swain (41:33):

Congratulations.

Joe Downs (41:35):

But it was really AI. Obviously he's doing the heavy lift, but it's all the ideating back and forth and this and that. And it was just wild. It was a very, very proud moment.

Peter Swain (41:45):

It should have been. That's freaking cool. That's so cool.

Joe Downs (41:49):

But also to your point, a moment born out of, "Hey, we worked on this together." Not, "Sorry, I don't have time for you. "

Peter Swain (41:57):

And we come back to this core belief I have that what if AI can actually make us better at being human, not take away our humanity, not strip us of our humanity, but offer us the opportunity to take your son who was obviously entrepreneurial but would never have gone through the X years to learn how to do all the coding and JavaScript and the ... And he's like, "Well, I've got this cool idea. Okay, well this thing can build it. "That's insane.

Joe Downs (42:25):

Remember I've said it a bunch of times recently. It used to be if you dream it, you could build it. And that was a lie.

Peter Swain (42:31):

It was.

Joe Downs (42:31):

Now it's literally-

Peter Swain (42:34):

It's true.

Joe Downs (42:34):

Very possible. It's never been more possible for us as adults, as entrepreneurs, for kids who are now having ideas and you know what, off topic here, but even if those ideas that these kids have that they ideate with AI don't pan out, never go anywhere, the fact that they were having that exercise, what could be more beneficial than that? Just the rep, the experience they got going back and forth and maybe finding out it wasn't a good idea or it was going to be too hard or not that plausible. Just the fact that they had the initiative, they had the entitlement and the empowerment to have that conversation with AI about potentially doing something, they're getting more out of that than school. I hate to say it that way.

Peter Swain (43:40):

I couldn't agree more. Hey, for anyone that listens to this episode that's in a ... I don't know why I feel the need to say this show, but for anyone that listens to this that needs to hear this, let me just say, "This sucks, you are not alone, this too shall pass." If you're in that middle of that real deep grind and people are being judgmental and not sporting, it is a really lonely, horrible, terrible, shitty place. And just because we're not in the room with you, we're in the room with you. It's good. You got it. You'll be fine. Don't worry. Get AI. Tell it to slap you around the face every so often. You'll be good.

Joe Downs (44:19):

And to add that, that was beautiful. Thank you. But to add to that, set up that system prompt, that life/business coach and just tell it ... It's almost like I'll take a shot at, was it millennials that were the most entitled generation? Act like a millennial. Just tell it what your wishes, your dreams, your desires. I don't want to work between 6:00 and 6:30 because I got to watch Whopner or Jeopardy or whatever's on at that time.

Peter Swain (44:51):

Yeah. I added a new one the other week that if anyone on my team books a meeting between 60 and 80, Jet now cancels it.

Joe Downs (45:00):

There you go.

Peter Swain (45:01):

She just cancels it and replies that saying- You're guarding your time. Yeah, because 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM is when I get to spend time with my kids.

Joe Downs (45:10):

Right. Sometimes you even need that reminder, right?

Peter Swain (45:17):

No, it was against myself 100% because-

Joe Downs (45:20):

Yeah, at this

Peter Swain (45:21):

Case- I had allowed people to put those meetings in. So now I looked at next week and I went, "I'm literally not going to see my kids next week."

Joe Downs (45:28):

There you go.

Peter Swain (45:30):

It doesn't work.

Joe Downs (45:32):

So that's a great rule to just keep your own self in check because we're human and we will go, "Oh, but that's an important meeting. So I got to do it because ... "

Peter Swain (45:41):

And Joe, that was where I started and I didn't manage to land the plane properly. That's why it has to be a system prompt because you will break your own rules. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. You'll move by a degree and a degree and a degree and a degree. And if you're in hustle season, you get more and more sleep deprived, which means your decision making capability goes down by the day. So you actually end up walking away from your north star more every day and then you can look back over six months and go, "I've achieved nothing. I'm nowhere nearer to the goals I was than six months ago because I hoard myself along the way with all these tiny little decisions and that's why the system prompt just stepping in and going, nope, wait, wait, stop there." It worked so well.

(46:34):

I

Joe Downs (46:35):

Have a feeling if I had used that, so I'm guilty of not using it as much as I should and I'm going to make sure I do. I think I have too much on my plate right now if I'm being honest, but I also know I can get to the end of the sprint because as I said in the beginning, I know at the launch of storage moguls, I know what will end once it's not just launch, but we've worked out the kings for a couple months, right? Once it levels off, I know I'm going to get a lot of my life back. My 10:00 PM to 1:00 AM life, for instance, I'm not actually going to refill that with more hustle. I actually want that back.

Peter Swain (47:23):

You're almost crying if you say it. Hey, do you want to know something else that's in my custom instructions?

Joe Downs (47:27):

Sure.

Peter Swain (47:29):

Because I voice prompt a lot, which I just think it might help some people as well while we're on the subject. Another one is if you hear overly negative or defeatist language from me, do not continue with anything until I have gone for a walk, drunk water and eaten some broccoli and confirmed with you that I've done it.

Joe Downs (47:48):

Interesting.

Peter Swain (47:49):

So if I go this effing guy, because I voice prompt, so it's a very natural conversation. It was again, it was a Tony Robbins rule, state story strategy. Don't work on your strategy till you've worked on your story and don't work on your story until you've worked on your state. So I'll literally go, "You should probably go for wart Pete and drink some water because the stories you're telling yourself around these interactions come from a very bad state."

Joe Downs (48:14):

What is that? Strategy, story, state?

Peter Swain (48:18):

So most people try and when they're presented with a problem, try and work out what to do, but your strategies come from your story.

Joe Downs (48:27):

Got it. So strategy, story, state.

Peter Swain (48:29):

What are you telling yourself about what's just happened? And your stories come from your state.

Joe Downs (48:38):

Okay. Oh, so the order state story strategy, that's right, but you work on it backwards. Got

Peter Swain (48:43):

It. So let's take an example that somebody may or may not be able to relate to. If you see your wife or your husband flirting with somebody else, you could tell yourself the story that your marriage is perfectly safe and sound and people get drunk and there's no problem at all or you could just tell yourself your story that she's a liar, she's a thief, she's a cheat, she doesn't deserve to be in your life, et cetera, et cetera. Fair? Those are two ... I mean, there's hundreds, but those are two possibilities. When you look at the underlying state of the person, if the person has meditated, if they've gone for a run, if they're hydrated, if they've slept well, if they've had intimate connection with their partner, if they've played golf recently, they are infinitely more likely to tell themselves the story that everything's fine.

(49:42):

If they haven't slept and they haven't eaten good food and they haven't drunk water and they are way more likely to go, "Can't believe she did that to me or can't believe he did that to me. " So Tony's point was instead of trying to work on out what to do about the problem, well, the problem is just the story you're telling yourself, that's actually the problem. So the first thing to do is not to work out what to do about the problem. The first thing to do is look at your internal state and go, "What story am I telling myself? Oh, I'm telling myself this person cheated on me or this person stole from me or this person screwed me over and to go and solve your state first." So it's something that he teaches a lot on state, story, strategy. So work on your state so that you tell yourself a better story so that you come up with a better strategy.

(50:37):

So when I haven't slept enough, Jet is programmed to go, "Pete, now is not a good time for you to be trying to fix this because you are going to blow up your world." Take a step back, go and have a nap, drink some water.

Joe Downs (50:51):

That's why I'm trying to get my 10:00 PM to 1:00 AM back to work in my state.

Peter Swain (50:58):

I love the fact that there'll be people in this audience that listening to this that don't work for themselves, that will think that you're being hyperbolic when you say the 10:00 PM to 1:00 AM back. And there are other people that are listening to this going, "He's probably not admitting on air that sometimes it's 10:00 PM to 3:00 AM."

Joe Downs (51:16):

I'm not that bad. I'm not that bad. But there are people listening going, "No, you're going to fill it with something else."

Peter Swain (51:24):

Well, I didn't bother calling you on that one. I was like, "Yeah, of course

Joe Downs (51:26):

You will.That's definitely going to be your preference.That is going to be my challenge. Well, because AI is addictive, that's the problem. And believe me, there's like five other business ideas in queue.

Peter Swain (51:36):

Well, it's not that AI is addictive. It's the fact that doing the things that you've always dreamt of doing and actually having a path to do them is addictive, which is the best and worst form of addiction there is.

Joe Downs (51:49):

But it's AI's fault. So there you go.

Peter Swain (51:51):

It's AI's fault, which means it's my fault, so you're welcome.

Joe Downs (51:53):

Yeah, it always comes back to you.

Peter Swain (51:56):

Okay. I'm good with that. My ego likes that. That's good.

Joe Downs (52:01):

Anyway, I think in summation, I think what for me the post really resonated because I think what Cody gave me is permission to stop apologizing for ambition. And I'll add one thing. The hustle means I think more when you can point exactly to what you're building and I love your ... I knew you would come up with something brilliant in this episode to help me and others is that life filter coach because that'll help quantify and label it, right the sprint and what it is. For me, storage moguls, once it's up and running and it's running, then it's done and I don't need to ... I get to get that life back and I actually am not going to refill that queue.That's the promise I'm going to make to myself and my family and it's not going to keep me awake until 1:0 AM. And I know Peter, you're on a similar path with your mastermind and consulting at peterswain.com.

(53:00):

And folks, Peter's been consulting on both StorageMobiles and another business of mine and can't recommend him enough. Thank you. Peterswain.com. If you're interested in storage moguls, if you want to follow along and see what we built, it's storagemoguls.ai, it's launched essentially.

(53:23):

Folks, we're getting some emails in. We appreciate it. They're mostly just gratuitous. Not that we don't appreciate the job well done and keep the show going type of emails, but send us in your questions, what you're having issues with.

Peter Swain (53:38):

Send us a doozy. Send us a hard one. Send us a hard question.

Joe Downs (53:41):

Yeah. I keep waiting to put Peter on the hot seat. That's what I told. I reeled him into this show with, I'm going to put you on the hot seat. I don't feel the seat's ever been that hot and that's on me. So I need your help folks. All right, idiots@successfulidiots.com. Send us some doozies, idiots@successfulidiots.com. For Peter Sweene, I'm Joe Downs. We are your successful idiots. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next week.